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Interfaith Meditation Group

The Interfaith Group continues to meet at 5pm on the first Sunday of the month at St Francis Xavier Parish Hall, Lavender Bay, NSW. For more information contact Paul Taylor at - palmypaul@hotmail.com or 0412 949 862

THE GOOD HEART 4 March 2018

Dear friends, this coming Sunday 4th March at 5pm our monthly gathering as an interfaith meditation group continues, we hope you may be able to join us. Please find attached the readings we will have before and after meditation which draw on the Anthroposophical and Buddhist traditions, and a desire to make them practical in our lives… we will continue our reflection on silence and how it allows our true self to be who we are. While the tone of each is quite different, the spoken one more conversational, the other more formal, we will no doubt explore the resonances between them, we look forward to our conversation on Sunday. Our thanks to Michael and to Rand who have been part of selecting this material. You may wish to spend some time with the readings prior to the group when we will share our reflections after meditation. If you are not able to be with us on Sunday, please enjoy the readings in your own time.

An indication if you can be with us would be appreciated and help with photocopying and seating. If you no longer wish to receive these emails please let us know.

Some are wondering if we will be meeting on April 1st, Easter Sunday, that is our plan if others agree.

With every blessing of love and peace,

Paul and Judi

READING BEFORE MEDITATION

From SILENCE by Robert Sardello, p.32 (Goldenstone Press, 2006)

The most basic experience of Silence is intimacy. We feel an intimacy with the world, as if we are within everything around us rather than behind or alongside things we are then looking at. This mantle of touch brings us to the living truth of our being. We know who we are in a completely non-self-conscious way. We feel how we, in our individuality, are part of a vast and mysterious world process. And when we cultivate Silence to the point that we are consciously within it rather than imagining that it is in us, we cannot be other than we are.

READING AFTER MEDITATION

From PERFECT LOVE IMPERFECT RELATIONSHIPS Healing the Wound of the Heart by John Welwood pp. 109-111 (Trumpeter Books, 2006)

Are you aware of this being that you are, this being that wants to live in you, through you, as you? If you’re truthful, you may admit you barely know this deeper dimension of yourself at all. This being that you are can only be found right here in the core of your living experience in this very moment. Everything else is just memory or mental projection.

The being that you are is not something you can wrap your mind around. It is beyond anything you can think. Though you may bristle when others impose their ideas on you or put you in some narrow conceptual box, you probably don’t notice how much you do this to yourself. Who you were yesterday, last year, or in childhood, adolescence, young adulthood - none of these is who you are; they are only memories. Holding in mind a picture or concept of who you are puts you in a soul-cage that keeps you from living freely and expansively...

Who I am is not a fixed entity but a dynamic stream of experiencing that is alive in every moment - when I let myself happen...

Let yourself be that being, if only at first for a moment here and there. This will help you settle down and connect with yourself, providing a fresh and immediate taste of your inherent dignity and value. Fresh moments like these make it possible to be happy just to be alive, just to be the being that you are.